Kutcher bets on SeatGeek as online ticket sites battle

Celebu-vestor Ashton Kutcher is at it again, using his venture capital fund, A Grade Investments, to pour an undisclosed amount of funding into online ticket-search firm startup SeatGeek, the company announced today.

SeatGeek uses algorithms to match the best deal with a customer’s specific needs for an event. It lets event-goers peruse thousands of potential pricing and seating options available for concerts and sporting events on the secondary market.

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The company said it would use the money to hire more employees (it currently has about a dozen), add more events and venues, and begin a push into the lucrative European market.

The company is on a bit of a roll — on Tuesday it announced it has teamed up with one of the five biggest sporting publications online, Bleacher Report.

The New York-based startup  landed $550,000 in funding from a group of investors and signed a distribution deal with the Wall Street Journal back in October.

It also partnered with Yahoo Sports as it continues to try to carve out a niche in the crowded ticket comparison and price forecasting sites for sporting and entertainment events.

Its competitors include similar ticketing sites FanSnap and TicketsBuy.

Kutcher is well known for spotting — and funding — the latest “cool kids” in Silicon Valley and has previously invested in companies such as Flipboard, Nowmov, Optimizely, Blekko and Quora.

Kutcher heads up A Grade Investments with Israeli businessman Guy Oseary.

Past funding has come from a consortium of previous backers PKS Capital, Founder Collective, Stage One Capital, Trisiras Group and angel investors Mark Wachen, Thomas Lehrman, Sunil Hirani, Allen Levinson and Arie Abecassis.

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Although the terms of today’s deal were undisclosed, previous funding brought the start-up a total investment of over $2 million since its founding in 2009.